Friday, November 07, 2014

How Okada man was paid N5,000 to kill 3-week-old baby girl

A prosecution witness, Inspector Simeon Kunamon, in the ongoing trial of the murder of a three-week-old baby, Princess Happiness Moses, yesterday told a Lagos High Court sitting at Igbosere how a motorcycle rider, popularly known as Okada, Ilaya Peters, was paid N5,000 to murder the baby.

Kunamon, who was led in evidence by the state prosecuting counsel, Ebere Agu, testified that the baby’s father, Moses Joseph, who is attached to Nigerian Navy, Amuwo Odofin, paid the defendant and others at large the said sum to forcibly take the baby from her mother, which he threw into the lagoon.

The witness, who gave testimony before Justice Raliatu Adebiyi, told the judge how the baby was forcibly taken from her mother, Gloria Yusuf, at about 1a.m. at her residence at 8, Odofin Close, Ajegunle, and thrown into the lagoon.

Kunamon also told the court that Moses organised some thugs on February 2, 2012, to steal the baby from the mother and deliver to him at Liverpool, where she was thrown into the lagoon in a peak milk cartoon, adding that the deceased baby’s body could not be recovered.

According to him, trouble started when Gloria Yusuf, mother of the baby told Moses, her lover of one year, that she was pregnant, and that Moses asked her to terminate the pregnancy, which she refused.

This, according to him, made her to pack out of the house and rented an apartment at Ajegunle, until she gave birth on January 13, 2012, to a baby girl she named Princess Happiness Moses.

He said the baby was killed on February 2, 2012, at about 1a.m., four weeks after the father of the baby paid her a visit.

The defendant had earlier been arraigned on a two-count charge bordering on conspiracy and murder preferred against him by Lagos State.

He, however, pleaded not guilty to the charges against him as Justice Adebiyi adjourned the matter to February 18, 2015.